Sunday, January 08, 2006

by Skald

The game world, as Leary called it... the world of human society and human interaction. Easy to forget its only a tiny slice of life, the universe, and everything. Our conditioning teaches us to myopically focus on human society. We read the newspaper, watch TV news, and stay up to date on "current events". We fret and worry about the doings of far away people. We become enraged by the actions of leaders.... we bemoan the state of "the world". We feel these events are important... vital. But perhaps they are less significant than we imagine. Thoreau considered all "news" to be gossip and nothing more.

Easy to forget. To become lost in language and symbols. Its easy to be a pessimist if human gossip consumes your mind.

But other worlds and other worldviews exist. In the vast, cosmic, Carl Sagan sense.... human society appears barely significant. Could there be far bigger, and more intimate, issues than what's happening in Iraq? As a society, Americans tend to shun big issues. They steer away from questions of life and death. They avoid thinking about disease, impermanence, interconnectedness. They strap on the blinders and firmly avoid a wider perspective.

But while scary..... there are practical, game-world benefits to contemplation: thinking about the nature of life and death, detaching from human society for a while, taking a respite from language.

These activities put the game-world in perspective... allow us to be less emotionally tied to its outcomes. Optimism tends to flower when this occurs...... because its easier to be an optimist when humanity is not your only benchmark.

Quite amazing, really, how narrow and backwater our perspective is. Scientist and philosophers have given us a glimpse into the infinite: billions of galaxies... each with billions of stars and planets. Infinite, non-local connections. Awesome internal vistas of the mind.... infinite sky mind at large. Matter and energy dancing, flowing... winking in and out of existence. Our own species... spinning in a millions-of-years evolutionary dance.

But what occupies our minds on a daily basis?

How many widgets can we sell? How many numbers are in our bank account? What some jackass in Washington is doing?

3 comments:

I, as a gypsy musician, have just been subjected to a cultic personality assasination plot (actually my second in as many years) of a harrowing magnitude. check these sites for relevancywho is free?the face of terrorandand this

anyone with a knack for clairvoyance, discrimination, and compassion?

i've cornered the market on widgets and am now programming new artificial demands for the splidget.

1. Body smells are erotic and sexual. Capitalists don't like that because they are impotent and opposed to all manifestations of sensuality and sexuality. Sexually awakened people are potentially dangerous to capitalists and their rigid, asexual system.

2. Body smells remind us that we are animals. Capitalists don't want us to be reminded of that. Animals are dirty. They eat things off the ground, not out of plastic wrappers. They are openly sexual. They don't wear suits or ties, and they don't get their hair done. They don't show up to work on time.

3. Body smells are unique. Everyone has her own body smell. Capitalists don't like individuality. There are millions of body smells but only a few deodorant smells. Capitalists like that.

4. Some deodorants are harmful. Capitalists like that because they are always looking for new illnesses to cure. Capitalists love to invent new medicines. Medicines make money for them and win them prizes; they also cause new illnesses so capitalists can invent even more new medicines.

"Poets are those who have made a profession and a lifestyle of being in touch with their bliss... Follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they'd be. Always go where you want to go -- where your body and soul want to go. When you have the feeling then stay with it, don't let anyone throw you off." --Joseph Campbell

"When you're on a journey, and the end keeps getting further and further away, then you realize that the real end is the journey." --Karlfried Graf Durckheim

Links

Hobopoets & Freedom Fighters (Blogs & Websites)

Hakim BeyFantastic- The anarchist-sufi prophet of Hobopoets! Visit this site!!

PlarkA traveler and hater of work.... nice thoughts on living a meaningful life.

Pupil in DenialThe writings of a woman who is staunchly resistent in ever parting with her lovelylife of an undergrad slash part-time barista which is everfaithful in churning quickmoney to satisfy her wickedwanderlust!

"Because of the dogma of workerism, unemployment is a problem rather than the boon to humanity that it should be." --Len Bracken

"Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed in them.... Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually, though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have." -- Henry David Thoreau

Rolling TimesTONS of information on RVs and RVing... much of it applicable to van/car living.

"Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor" -- Henry David Thoreau

"A kind of second childhood falls on so many men. They trade their violence for the promise of a small increase in life span. In effect, the head of the house becomes the youngest child.... I did not want to surrender fierceness for a small gain in yardage. My wife married a man; I saw no reason why she should inherit a baby... And in my own life I am not willing to trade quality for quantity." --John Steinbeck, Travels With Charly

"The negative refusal of Home is "homelessness", which most consider a form of victimization, not wishing to be forced into nomadology. But "homelessness" can in a sense be a virtue, an adventure- so it appears, at least, to the huge international movement of the squatters, our modern hobos." -Hakim Bey

Spiritual

Vipassana MeditationFantastic meditation courses all over the world (free)!! I HIGHLY recommend them.

"Act as if you were already free... take the risk, dance before you calcify."-- Hakim Bey

We must constantly remind ourselves (since our culture won`t do it for us) that this monster called WORK remains the precise & exact target of our rebellious wrath, the one single most oppressive reality we face. - Hakim Bey

Poetry, Writing, & Art

Cafe PressA fantastic self-publishing site. No upfront costs. The wave of the future for DIY publishers.

Written RoadJen Leo's travel writing site. Very good and very informative.

Arthur RimbaudA glorious site with poems and a biography of the restless mad genius.

Aldous HuxleyA collection of links and info on the great writer-philospher.

"In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness" -- Henry David Thoreau

"Altough we all realize that monotony is boring, almost every form of industrial work- banking, accounting, mass-producing, service- is monotonous, and most people are paid for simply putting up with monotony..." --Alan Watts

"And what is the nature of a wasteland? It is a land where everybody is living an inauthentic life, doing as other people do-- doing as you're told, with no courage for your own life. To live an authentic life, Take your wisdom from your own experience. Because in thinking, the majority is always wrong." --Joseph Campbell

"All societies tremble when the scornful aristocracy of the tramps, the inaccessibles, the uniques, the rulers over the ideal, and the conquerors of the nothing resolutely advances." --Hakim Bey

Nomadism & Travel

BootsnAllIndependent travel stories from around the world. Contribute your own.

World HumTravel dispatches from a shrinking planet. Good travel writing site.

AjarnThis is the largest and most comprehensive website for English teaching in Thailand. Has an extensive job board, plus general information about living in Thailand

Stickman's BangkokAn in-depth site with practical information about living and working in Bangkok. Cocky, cynical and negative- but the basic info is good.

TealitSite for teaching English and living in Taiwan, including a job board.

Another year is gone -A travel hat on my head,Straw sandals on my feet--Basho

"If there's one thing I hate, it's the word "safety". We live in a civilization of safety, in which we are eventually cocooned from all danger, that is to say, from all experience. What we are left with is a vegetable plugged into a computer, who never leaves the room, like a hideous vision of a William Gibson novel. We would be well advised to rediscover risk." --Hakim Bey

"Remember above all things that to write is not difficult, not painful, that it comes out of you with ease, that you can whip up a little tale in no time, that when you are sincere about it, that when you want to impress a truth, it is not difficult, not painful, but easy, graceful, full of smooth power, as if you were a writing machine with a store of literature that is boundless, enormous, endless, rich. For it is true; this is so. Do not forget it in your gloomier moments. Make your stuff warm, drive it home American-wise, don't mind critics, don't mind the stuffy academic theses of scholars, they don't know what they are talking about, they're way off the track, they're cold; you're warm, you're red hot, you can write all day, you know what you know...." -- Jack Kerouac